Jesus is the Glory of God — John 11:25-57 (07.19.2026)

Today's scripture reading comes from John chapter 11, verses 25 through 57.

John 11:25–57

And after I finish reading, I will say, this is the word of the Lord.

And if you will please respond by saying, thanks be to God.

So John 11, verse 25.

John 11:25

Jesus said to Martha, I'm the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in

me, though he die, yet shall he live.

And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?

She said to him, Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ,

the Son of God, who is coming into the world.

When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary,

saying in private, The teacher is here and is calling for you.

And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet

come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him.

When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her,

saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was

going to the tomb to weep, to weep there.

Now, when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet,

saying to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping,

he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.

And he said, Where have you laid him? They said to him, Lord,

come and see. And Jesus wept.

So the Jews said, See how he loved him. But others of them said,

Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind also have kept this man from dying?

Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave and a stone

lay against it. Jesus said, take away the stone.

Mary, the sister of the dead man said to him, Lord, by this time there will

be an odor for he's been dead four days.

Jesus said to her, did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?

So they took away the stone and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said,

Father, I thank you that you have heard me.

I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing

around that they may believe that you sent me.

When he said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out.

The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips and

his face wrapped with a cloth.

And Jesus said to them, unbind him and let him go.

Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him.

But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.

So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said,

What are we to do? For this man performs many signs.

If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him,

and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.

But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them,

You know nothing at all, nor do you understand that it is better for you that

one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.

He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year,

he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation and not for the nation only,

but also to gather into one, the children of God who are scattered abroad.

So from that day on, they made plans to put him to death.

Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among Jews, but went from there to the

region near the wilderness to a town called Ephraim.

And there he stayed with the disciples.

Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and many went up from the country

to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves.

They were looking for Jesus, and saying to one another as they stood in the

temple, What do you think, that he will not come to the feast at all?

Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew

where he was, he should let them know, so that they might arrest him.

This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

Good morning. So glad that many of you are visiting us today.

My name is Brendan, and I am the student lead for our Bible study here at Christ Church.

So glad you're with us. We're going to be continuing the Gospel of John, what we just read.

I invite you to turn there with me. If you do not have a Bible,

we have it printed out in your bulletin, and it'll also be up on the screen,

so that you can follow along. Before we get started, let's pray.

God, thank you for this day that you have made.

Lord, thank you that we can gather in your name and sing praises to you and

pray to you. Lord, thank you that you hear us and you care for us.

Lord, I pray that you would open our eyes so that we may see wonderful and glorious,

truths and realities in your word, and that by seeing, we may believe,

and that believing, we may have life, and that by having life,

we may be transformed until we see you face to face.

In your name, I pray. Amen.

Well, on September 16th, 2001, it was the first Sunday after 9-11, him.

And many of the churches were packed all across America with people with all

sorts of emotions, anger and grief, confusion.

Many were left wondering things like, if God is so good, then how did this evil happen?

If God is good, then why this? Maybe you remember that Sunday,

what was preached that morning.

If you were preaching that Sunday, to what passage would you turn to answer questions like that?

Well, for Tim Keller, pastor and preacher in New York City for nearly 30 years,

he turned to John chapter 11.

John 11 · chapter mention

I think he went there because it's in this chapter that we see above all else,

we need to see the glory of God, even if it means sickness and grief and suffering and death.

Above all else, we need to see the glory of God.

Last week, we learned that Jesus delayed when he heard that his beloved friend was sick.

You might read that and think it would say something like this.

Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard, he went right away.

Or you may think it would say something like this. Jesus loved them.

So he healed Lazarus with just a word from a distance, which we've already seen

Jesus be able to do in this gospel. But he doesn't do that.

Jesus loved them, so he stayed. How could that delay be loving?

John 11, 4 gives us that answer. But when Jesus heard it, he said,

this illness does not lead to death.

It is for the glory of God so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.

Because the most loving thing for God to give us is a glimpse of his glory.

More than anything else, more than the healing, more than the prevention of

suffering, more than the prevention of an illness, more than the prevention

of death, we need to see the glory of God.

It is our chief end.

Because if God is God, then he is the greatest reality in all of the universe.

And for God to give us anything less than that would be for him to not love

us. We need him. We need a glimpse of his glory.

We need to see him.

This is the purpose of John's gospel, that we would see who Jesus is,

that we would see his glory, and that by seeing it, we may believe that he is

the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing we may have life.

John achieves this purpose up to this point in his gospel by giving us seven signs.

These seven signs point beyond themselves and point to Jesus to tell us who

he is. And we now come to the seventh sign.

Ultimately, the final sign is the resurrection of Christ himself.

But climactically, we're now seeing that Jesus is able to defeat death.

At the first of these signs in John chapter two, this is where Jesus turns the water into wine.

And John establishes his point for the signs when he says this,

this, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his

glory and his disciples believed in him.

That's what these signs are doing. They're manifesting the glory of Jesus.

What is the glory of Jesus?

Well, before we answer that question, we need to ask, what is glory?

Could you define glory if someone asked you?

It's one of those Christian cliche terms, I think, where we know kind of vaguely

what it is, but we couldn't just give you a simple answer.

In the Hebrew, glory simply just means weight. It is the deepest reality of

who you are. It's what makes you, you. That's your glory.

In John 1, we see Jesus' glory.

John 1, 14, and the word who is Christ, the word became flesh and he dwelt among

us and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth.

This is John's way of referencing Exodus 34. If you remember,

Exodus 34 is when Moses asks the Lord, Lord, show me your glory. Show me your glory.

We know this is what John is referencing because of the key phrases dwelt among

us and the key phrase grace and truth. Dwelt among us is Jesus essentially tabernacling among us.

The glory of the Lord was manifest through the people of God, through a glory cloud.

First in the tent of meeting, which is the tabernacle, and then in the temple.

And now ultimately Jesus who calls himself the temple is dwelling among his

people and we are seeing his glory.

And the other key phrase, grace and truth. This is simply just the Greek way

of referencing and summarizing the Exodus 34 statement. So let's look at that statement.

The Lord, the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord,

the Lord, a God merciful, or you could say compassionate and gracious,

slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,

keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin,

but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers,

on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.

Jesus is the compassionate and gracious God who is slow to anger and abounding

in steadfast love, who is able to maintain both forgiveness and justice.

Jesus is the glory of God.

For the rest of our time, I want to walk through this story and show you that

Jesus is the glory of God.

Jesus exhibits this Exodus 34 glory because we need to see this glory.

We need to see the glory of God in Christ.

My first point, I'll just read all four of them. First, we see God's glory in

the compassion of Christ.

We see God's glory in the anger of Christ.

We see God's glory in the faithfulness of Christ. And finally,

we see God's glory in the substitutionary death of Christ.

First, the compassion of Christ. Look with me in 17 through 34.

This is where we see Jesus interact with the sisters of Lazarus.

And you can imagine they're grieving.

They've just lost their brother. They're close to Jesus. They've seen him perform

miracles for other people who are not as close to Jesus as them. They're grieved.

And we see Jesus give a response to each sister differently,

a different response, even though each sister says the same thing to Jesus.

They're saying the same thing, but they're getting a different response because

Jesus knows what we need. Let's first look at Martha.

It's in Martha that we see the compassion of truth.

John 11, 21 through 27.

Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

But even now, I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.

Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again. Truth. truth.

Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.

Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me,

though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.

Do you believe this? Truth.

She said to him, Yes, Lord. I believe that you are the Christ,

the Son of God, who is coming into the world.

It's by those truth statements that we are seeing the compassion of Christ.

How could truth in this moment be compassionate to this grieving woman?

Well, because truth heals. Truth heals.

Proverbs 27, verse 5. Better is open rebuke than hidden love.

Proverbs 27:5

Faithful are the wounds of a friend.

Profuse are the kisses of an enemy. because there are times in our suffering

when more than anything, we need truth.

We need the truth that hurts.

That is what a faithful friend does. They tell you what you need to hear,

not what you want to hear.

Truth is healing. Jesus knew what Martha needed then and he still knows what

you need now, whether it's truth or tears.

How is truth healing?

Notice in verse 23, I believe, verse 24, sorry.

Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.

Martha has right theology. She is affirming the end times that when the Lord

returns, he will judge and he will rise his people and they will be judged.

And you will either be with the Lord or apart from the Lord with a real physical body forever.

She's affirming that Jesus is not correcting false belief, but shallow belief.

He moves theology from paper to person.

He is moving her from good theology to personalized theology.

With this painful surgical procedure of suffering and truth,

God will often in our lives remove shallow belief and implant deep personal trust.

What is the problem with impersonal theology?

Well, it separates the promise from the promiser, the blessing from the blesser.

This is what Jesus has been doing all throughout John.

We saw it in John 6. Jesus is showing us after he feeds the 5,000,

he's showing us that it was not ultimately about the manna in the wilderness that fed Israel.

That was a sign pointing beyond itself to show us that God is our bread.

He is our providence.

Deuteronomy 6, man does not, or I think it's 8, man does not live on bread alone,

but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

And Jesus, who is the word of God, comes to us and says, I am the bread.

That's what he's pointing to. That's what he's doing here for Martha.

The resurrection is not the gift.

The resurrection is a means to the greater gift, which is God. God is the gift.

The same way that the 2020 vision to be able to see the beautiful sunset.

The vision is not the gift. The vision is just the means to see the gift.

That is the resurrection. Our ability to finally enjoy God fully.

Jesus shows us the compassion of truth. Jesus also shows us the compassion of

tears. Look at Mary. Verse 32.

Lord, if you had been here, same statement, Lord, if you had been here,

my brother would not have died.

When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come to her also weeping,

he was deeply moved in spirit and greatly troubled.

And he said, where have you laid him?

They said to him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept.

Mary says the same thing, but this time she doesn't get truth. She gets tears.

Jesus is showing us the compassion of tears. What makes these tears so significant?

Think about it. Jesus has already said what he's going to do.

Jesus has said, I will raise him up. He has told us what he's going to do,

and he knows what he's going to do, and he's still weeping.

If you knew that you were about to fix a problem, would you cry over that problem?

No. So what does this tell us about Jesus? What do these tears tell us about his compassion?

It tells us that the brokenness of this world breaks his heart more than it does ours.

Our grief grieves him more than it grieves us.

He is more broken over your pain than even you are. This is the compassion of

a good and perfect father.

That way Jesus dealt with these sisters is how he is still dealing with his people today.

He knows what you need in your grief and in your suffering.

He knows when you need truth. He knows when you need tears.

Next point. We also see the glory of God in the anger of Christ.

When Moses asked the Lord, show me your glory.

Moses does not say, I am never angry. That is not part of the glory of God.

The glory of God is that he is slow to anger.

It means he's patient with sinners.

So what is Jesus angry at in this passage? Look with me in verse 33 and 38.

There's a similar statement.

He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. And then it goes on in 38 to say

again, he was deeply moved.

We sort of miss this in our English translation, but the commentator D.A.

Carson translates it like this.

He was outraged in spirit and troubled.

In the Greek, this actually refers to the snorting of horses.

And so when it's applied to a human, it suggests anger, deep anger.

So here Jesus is standing at the tomb of his beloved friend,

The author of life staring down death.

He's breathing heavy.

His fists are clenched.

He's snorting. He's crying. Here is where we see what God thought about 9-11.

Here is where we see what God thought about your loved one's funeral.

Here's what we see God to be in our diagnosis, in our illness,

in our sickness, in our death.

God hates death because death is not normal. Death is abnormal.

Maybe in your grief, you've heard someone say something like,

death is just a part of life.

Death is a, or dying is a natural process.

No, that is not what the Bible says. The Bible says that death is an enemy.

As Christians, we must define what is natural and normal in life before the fall.

We must root what we define to be good and true and right in what was going

on before the fall of man.

C.S. Lewis is actually really helpful here to show us that we know deep down

that death is not normal. We know it.

He says this, For we are so little reconciled to time, that we are even astonished at it.

How he's grown, we exclaim, how time flies.

As though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty.

It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water.

And that would be strange indeed.

Unless, of course, the fish were destined to become, one day,

a land animal. What is he saying?

He's saying that our constant surprise at the passing of time and the process

of aging and dying is a clue.

It is a clue that tells us we were not made for the water of suffering and death,

but we were made to be a land animal.

We were made to live and dwell with the Lord where there is no tears,

no sorrow, no pain, no death.

Death is not normal. Death is abnormal.

Death is unnatural. John 10.10, the thief comes only, this is Jesus speaking,

the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy.

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Verse John 3.8, the reason that the Son of Man appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

Jesus is angry at death because he is the author of life.

We actually see his anger earlier in John's Gospel, John chapter 2.

John 2 · chapter mention

If you remember the anger of Christ in the temple, why was Jesus so angry?

He made a whip. He drove out the money changers. He flipped tables.

Because the Jewish leaders had renovated the Gentile place of worship to be a place of commerce.

Jesus' love for the glory of God being enjoyed and worshiped by all nations motivated his anger.

Because anger and compassion are not at odds.

The compassion of God informs the anger of God. His anger flows out of his love.

Because anger reveals love. God loves when we enjoy him and commune with him and worship him.

And so, when the temple is being messed with, he's angry.

What are you angry about? What gets you angry? Because anger reveals what you love.

When your reputation is threatened. When, you know, when you're angry at the

size of your house. Maybe the size of your wallet. What gets you angry?

Maybe for the children. You're angry when your parents tell you to get off the phone.

That reveals that you love the phone too much.

Because anger reveals love. Psalm 119. Streams of tears flow from my eyes.

For your law is not obeyed.

Do streams of tears flow from your eyes when God's law is not obeyed?

Are you angry at the wickedness of this world? Know this, the Lord is angry with you.

He is angry alongside of you.

Anger reveals love.

He is more compassionate than we could ever be, and he's more angry at even

the evil in this world than we could ever be. Thirdly.

We see God's glory in the faithfulness of Christ.

This is the faithfulness of Christ to do what he said he would do and raise Lazarus. He did it.

He said he would do it and then he did it. What did he say he would do?

Well, verse 4, this illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God.

Verse 11, our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I will go wake him up.

23, your brother will rise again.

Jesus is demonstrating at the raising of Lazarus, both the power of God to be

able to reverse death and give life and the glory of God to do what he said

he would do because he is faithful.

This is what it means to say that Jesus is full of grace and truth.

When we see that Jesus is full of truth, we're not saying truth as in a factual

statement. We're talking about faithfulness.

When you say something like, oh, that's a true friend. You're not saying they are factually a friend.

You're saying they are a real friend, a reliable friend, a faithful friend.

And Jesus is that faithful friend who will raise you up on the last day if you believe in him.

Because God's faithfulness assures us of the resurrection. Look at verse 38.

Jesus says, or sorry, 39. Jesus said, take away the stone.

Martha, the sister of the dead man said to him, Lord, by this time there will

be an odor for he has been dead four days.

Jesus said to her, did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?

Okay, John is making it very clear in this moment that Lazarus is dead.

He's really dead. He is not passed out. He has been dead for four days. There's a bad odor.

John refers to Martha as the sister of the dead man.

In other words, you could say Martha's statement kind of like this,

but Lord, it's too late. He's gone.

He's already decomposing. This is irreversible. This is irredeemable.

This is beyond your power.

How does the Lord respond? Essentially, he's saying, I'm faithful.

I said I would do it. Did you not hear what I said?

Trust my word. Hear and believe. I am faithful to do what I said I would do.

The faithfulness of God assures us that he will keep his promises.

There's this moment in the other gospels towards the end of Jesus's life where

he's being questioned by a variety

of religious leaders because they're trying to trap him in his words.

And by trapping him, they hope that he is arrested and then killed because they want him dead.

And one of those groups is the Sadducees. And what you need to know about the

Sadducees is that they did not believe in the resurrection.

And so they're trapping Jesus in his words. They're trying to trap him and they're

questioning him about the resurrection.

Let's look at Jesus's response to them.

Mark 12, 26 through 27. I'll just read it. You don't have to turn.

And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses,

in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him saying, I am the God of,

Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.

He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

You are quite wrong. Jesus's argument is very simple here.

God does not say I to Moses, who is now alive many years after Abraham,

Isaac, and Jacob have long been dead.

God does not say, I was the God of Abraham, I was the God of Isaac,

I was the God of Jacob. He says, I am.

They are still alive because I will remain faithful to the promises that I have given them.

They will inherit the land. The world will be blessed. The curse will be reversed.

I am their God. The argument is this, the God who gave life to the dead wombs

of Abraham and Jacob's wives.

Sarah, Rebecca, and then Rachel. The God who gave life to their wombs is the

same God who will give life to the dead tombs of his people.

God is the author of life, and death will not prevail because he is faithful.

The glory of God in the faithfulness of Christ assures us of the life to come.

Finally, we have seen the glory of God in the compassion of Christ.

We have seen the glory of God in the anger of Christ.

We have seen the glory of God in the faithfulness of Christ.

And finally, we see God's glory in the substitutionary death of Christ.

So, after Jesus performs this sign and raising Lazarus, the crowd is divided.

Some believe, some don't believe.

Those who did not believe, in turn, we read that they went and reported what

Jesus had done to the Pharisees and the other religious leaders.

They reported this to them because they wanted Jesus dead.

Why did they want him dead? Where do we see it? Well, they want him dead because

they are concerned that if Jesus' messianic movement continued,

it would likely lead to a revolt.

And the Romans would take away, it says, come take away both our place and our

nation, which is referring to the temple and the nation of Israel.

They were really concerned more than knowing that Jesus was their Messiah.

They were concerned with keeping their temple and their nation.

They were concerned about that and they missed Christ.

Then we read this paradoxical prophecy that John records for us in 49 and 50.

It says this, but one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year,

said to them, to his other fellow Jewish leaders,

you know nothing at all, nor do you understand that it is better that the one

man die should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.

John goes on to tell us what this meant. John says he did not say this of his

own accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would

die for the nation and not for the nation only, but also to gather into,

one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

So from that day on, they made plans to put him to death.

What Caiaphas and the Jewish and Roman leadership meant for evil, God meant for good.

Man meant this for evil, that Jesus die so that they may retain their power and status.

But God meant it for good, that for those in Christ, you would have life in

his name and have it abundantly because he died in your place.

Moses is shown the glory of God, you may have noticed when we read it towards

the end of that statement. It seems sort of contradictory.

The glory of God includes that God keeps steadfast love for thousands,

forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear

the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the

children's children to the third and fourth generation.

How can God forgive iniquity, transgression, and sin, and at the same time it

be said that he will by no means clear the guilty.

How can he forgive sinners and punish sin?

The cross of Christ. The glory of God is most manifest at the cross of Christ

because this is where the justice of God and the mercy of God meet.

1 John 1.9 If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our

sins and cleanse us from all of unrighteousness.

He is just to forgive.

Is mercifully forgiving us and he is just. For those of us who trust in Jesus,

your forgiveness is not merely a matter of mercy, but of justice.

For if Christ took upon himself your sin and it was paid for in full,

it is finished, then there is no more debt to be paid.

It would be a matter of injustice for God not to forgive those for whom Christ

paid their debt on the cross.

The justice of God demands the pardon of those in Christ.

Are you seeing this glory? Are you seeing the glory of God in his compassion,

in his anger, in his faithfulness, and in his death on the cross.

We need to see this glory.

If you are a believer and you have seen this glory, you need to keep seeing this glory.

You need to keep beholding the Lamb of God taking away your sin.

The gospel is not step one and then you look elsewhere.

You see the glory of God in the gospel and you keep seeing the glory of God in the gospel.

You do not look beyond the gospel. You look more intently into it and that is

where you are transformed.

For those of you who have not yet believed, you need to see this glory.

Pray to the Lord that He would open your eyes to see the glory of God displayed,

in the face of Jesus Christ.

Need to turn from your sin and turn in trust towards him and the veil will be

removed and you will see his glory, glory as of the one and only son from the

father, full of grace and truth.

If you confess your sin, he is faithful and just to forgive you of your sin

and cleanse you from all of your unrighteousness.

We need this glory, even if it means death.

We see this glory through death.

We see this glory at the resurrection of Christ who defeats death. Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for your glory, that you have made yourself known in the person

and work of Jesus Christ, that he is compassionate and gracious and slow to

anger, that he loves what you love and hates what you hate.

Lord, thank you for the comfort in knowing that our death is not the end,

but our death is a doorway into everlasting life with you.

Lord, you say in your word, blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Lord, we want to see you. We want to keep seeing you.

Help us, Lord, open our eyes that we see. In your name I pray. Amen.